I’m gonna call this blog “society” because that’s what I’ve always referred to it as, my own little meaning. By definition, the word society means:
1. The aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.
"drugs, crime, and other dangers to society"
2. An organization or club formed for a particular purpose or activity.
So by definition, it doesn’t specifically describe what I’m trying to do here, but it’s the closest word that I can think of to describe this blog. It’s actually kinda hard for me to describe in one sentence what this blog is about, but the closest thing I can come up with is this: I’ve seen alotta movies, and I’ve played alotta video games. I don’t read alotta books, even though I’ve heard from multiple people (Stephen King specifically) that if you read alot and write alot, you can become a good writer. Well, I hate reading, so I sorta just developed my own style of writing.
But the point is, after seeing all these games and seeing all these movies, you begin to understand what works and what doesn’t. And you also begin to see similarities between alotta these products, mostly in storytelling, which I’ll get to below. I’m gonna try my best to make this look nice and neat like everything I do, but from my point of view it’ll never be perfect. As I type this I literally have about 5 pages of random notes below of like 100’s of different points I wanna bring up, and sorting through all that, and making this document flow is gonna be a pain in the ass but I’m gonna try my best.
A couple years ago I did this huge review in 2013 on the Evil Dead remake, took a year off, and then I came back almost 2 years later in 2015 and did all these big films like Pacific Rim, Man of Steel, Divergent and Godzilla. But it wasn’t until I came back and did those reviews until I came up with this whole theory, so I’m pretty thankful for that. I mean Pacific Rim and Man of Steel both came out in 2013 so I could’ve easily did those when they came out and got them from the library. But I think if I did that I wouldn’t have come up with this whole society thing, so it was worth the long wait.
Batman
-I’m definitely gonna build alot on this movie, but Batman Returns is a pretty cool movie. I’ve seen it 100’s of times as a kid and even reviewed it. But it wasn’t until later when I started catching it on cable, did I start to realise alotta these things. It’s weird cause sometimes when you review a movie, you pick out and notice things you’ve never seen before. But sometimes its not till years later till you realise even more things.
It’s a weird thing, cause sometimes I’ll be watching a movie and not even be paying attention to is, messing around on my ipod. But even doing that I’ll notice something in the movie that I didn’t notice before, even when I did the review.
1. Catwoman doesn’t know who she is
2. Batman and Catwoman wear masks / hiding who they are
3. Cops are overpaid / society
4. Penguin tries to flirt but gets rejected
5. Not knowing your parents
6. Oswald (the president) lying to the people
-I never realized this, but alot of the big guys (horror icons, monsters, etc) weren’t born killers, they were all bullied at some point and / or didn’t wanna fight till they were forced to:
1. Godzilla didn’t wanna fight till he was shot at
2. Jason didn’t wanna fight till people started camping at Crystal Lake
3. Freddy didn’t wanna fight till he was burned
4. Chucky didn’t wanna fight till people got in his way
5. Hulk didn’t wanna fight till people made him angry
6. Spiderman didn’t wanna fight till people messed with Mary Jane
And they were all bullied in some way shape or form. I think out of all of them, the only one that wasn’t bullied was Batman, atleast not in Batman Returns cause right now that’s the only one I’ve seen.
fear giving power / buddies betraying you
-Batman Returns, society, ppl hiding who they are, corruption, government, lies, rich ppl, ppl on the bottom taking control, penguin is easy to manipulate, etc.
Divergent & Sequels (beginning)
The next set of movies I wanna talk about are Divergent and its sequels. I don’t wanna ramble too much about this movie, but its one of my favorites. If you really wanna know how I feel about the movie, read the review I did, or look at the walkthrough I did. But anyway, Divergent has alotta metaphors in it, and it wasn’t until I did the review till I saw so many comparisons of the movie to the Harry Potter (HP) movies.
As of this writing I haven’t seen all the of the HP movies but I’m very familiar with the first 3. I used to watch them all the time, but as with Godzilla, it wasn’t till I was older that I saw all the similarities and the metaphors in these movies. Divergent and Harry Potter are very similar, in the sense that both characters (Tris and Harry) don’t really know who they are, but over the coarse of the movie, they realise that their special and their become more and more brave. It’s supposed to empower us, and represent who we are supposed to be, brave, and that all of us are different. I know I am, and that’s why I can relate to the movie.
I’ll probably mention this below (I know I will) but it’s the same thing with superheroes. Every superhero starts off as an outcast or a nerd: Peter Parker - Spiderman, Bruce Banner - Hulk, their all nerds (except Batman) but they all have their own special qualities. And even though Divergent and Harry Potter aren’t superheroes, the characters in the movie represent pretty much the same metaphors, they just don’t wear tights.
Below this are about 5 pages of random notes that I jotted down over the past year or so. It’s overwhelming as hell trying to wrap my head around how I’m gonna sort through this stuff, rewrite them and make it sound coherent but I think I’m just gonna leave them as is. If I tried to rewrite and perfect this stuff the way I really wanted it’d never get done lol.
-I was watching behind the scenes for Divergent and they had green mats over the laptops. I knew they were all CGI but, it was cool to know. They probably did the same in the other movies.
Some of this stuff I’ve probably mentioned in the walkthrough in the movie, I just didn’t delete them here. But I’m gonna leave them here anyway cause I hate deletin stuff:
-In the scene where Janine talks to Tris, she mentions how “its human nature to choose faction over blood” and to me, what she’s saying is people usually choose love over their jobs, which makes sense, along with that whole “blood is thicker than water” phrase.
-when Four goes “how’d you break the glass” and “how’d you get rid of the birds” what he really means is “how’d you overcome your fear so easily”
I know I mentioned this in the walkthrough, whatever
-When Four goes into zombie-mode, he doesn’t know who he is anymore, which sorta represents life. People who don’t know who they are, are the ones that turn on you and are easy to control.
-The train scene represents life, and the jumping scene. You gotta take the first leap even though you don’t know what’s going to happen. First they jump together, and then Tris jumps on her own, knowing people are gonna follow her. Living faction-less is like learn or lose in life, do or die.
-When Eric changes the rule, it shows us that in life, anything can be thrown at you. It also reminds me of Superman, how the lady is trying to get rid of Divergents / people they don’t understand. If you’re a special person, people are gonna be jealous of you.
-In the zip-line scene she gets nervous, and then she does it. She flies past the buildings, and after awhile she gets used to it and starts to enjoy herself, till she needs to stop before she hits the wall. To me this scene is like saying “you’re having fun but you also gotta know when to stop”
-In the Allegiant trailer, the girl goes “people think walls separate us, they also protect us” I’m assuming their talkin about emotional walls. Thinkin back to the first movie, its alot like going to college, you don’t wanna let anyone in. add this to society blog.
-In the sparring scene, Four says she’s doing it wrong. It’s also like life, even if your not the best, keep practicing and you’ll get there.
-After she loses the fight with the last jumper, we see her in the hospital bed. She’s lost, and has nothing to lose anyway. So she runs after the train. The idea here is she has nothing left, and she nothing left to do but keep on fighting. It’s also telling us to never give up no matter how beat we are.
-I watched behind the scenes footage of Divergent on youtube. The segment is called A Fearless Finish and the director (Neil Burger) said he “wanted us to feel like we were there” well he failed on that. And he talks about the sets and digital effects and they kept saying “never underestimate the city” well, you failed on that too with your shitty camerawork!
-the behind the scenes video had the movie in 2:35 aspect ratio, which made it look way better. I personally prefer 1:85 but as long as there’s no camera-crop I usually don’t care which one is used. But if there is a crop, I prefer 2:35 cause you can’t see it as much.
-in the scene on the rope, Four says “divergent would jump, dauntless would get to that bridge” what he’s really saying is “you don’t have to be the bravest”
-in the scene where their all walking around like zombies, dude calls them “mindless drones”
-stiff name
“a boring, conventional person”
Divergent & Insurgent (ending)
Ghostbusters
-In Ghostbusters, the world is ending, girl is seducing the dork. Its alot like Godzilla, world is ending but people are gambling and pretending nothing is going on, ignoring the problem.
-The Ghostbusters movies I think have a big thing of society in them. That whole phrase “gotta take control” definitely means something, gotta take control of your life. Another big scene I like is you got guys (even nerds) flirtin with girls while the world is being destroyed, and I think that means something too. It’s like the scene in Godzilla 2014 where you see people gambling while Godzilla outside attacking. The word is going down but people are only thinking about themselves at the moment.
Godzilla (beginning)
And speaking of Godzilla I guess we can talk about that movie first. It’s pretty obvious I’m a big Godzilla fan, having reviewed atleast more than half of the movies in the series including the okay-ish American 2014 version (and the shitty Jurassic Park rip-off 1998 version) But I really wanna just talk about the 3 main movies in the series for this: Godzilla (1954) The Return of Godzilla (1984) and the newer Godzilla (2014)
I also wanna bring up the fact that I probably wouldn’t have come up with half this stuff if I didn’t do the lengthy reviews that I do. Most reviewers do those short reviews where they only talk about a couple scenes, but not me. I talk about every scene from start to finish, but in doing that you’re able to learn so much more about the movie. By reviewing every scene, you think about everything 10 times more. Not only was I older when I reviewed the movies and able to understand these scenes, I was also thinking about every scene like 10x more.
For the most part, I think Godzilla 1954 (the first in the series) was mostly about war and how people react to war. I’ve read about this on various sites, about how the Japanese wanted to make a movie about war but couldn’t for some reason, so they instead made Godzilla, which was sorta the same thing. But instead of war specifically, he was a metaphor for war, with people getting killed for no reason. So on a basic level I guess the first movie was the easiest to interpret: it was a movie about war and our reaction to people getting killed for no reason.
Godzilla 1984 is the next movie I wanna talk about, which came out 30 years later and was both a remake / prequel to the first one. Personally it’s one of my Top 3 in the series cause I love the way he looks in this movie, and he just felt bigger. So anyway after destroying the city for most of the 2nd half of the movie, they end up getting recordings of these bird calls. So they use this machine to make the same sounds near Godzilla (sorta as a decoy) and he follows them. He’s in the middle of destroying the city when he hears the bird calls, but he immediately stops and follows them towards the volcano, where they end up detonating it, throwing him into the volcano and killing him.
The scene still gives me chills just thinking about it, and it always made me sad as a kid. And I’ve seen the movie loads of times as a kid but again, it wasn’t until I got older and I started reviewing these movies, did I see what this scene really meant: He was just destroying the city, but he immediately stopped for something so small and delicate as a flock of birds. I actually read up on birds just for this blog and from what I’ve read, they say birds were “the last surviving group of dinosaurs” and it got me thinking. When I was younger I sorta knew what was going on, but not completely until now.
My first few notions were that
1. the birds were calling him
2. he was trying to attack them
3. he felt close to them since they were closer to his evolution
So #3 is the closest to the actual answer to I guess my little theory that was built upon more as I got older and understood what was going on. He must’ve seen the birds, and in his mind, went “oh boy there’s actually animals on this planet just like me” and began to follow them, hoping to meet more of his own kind. And personally I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for what the heck is going on. He just wanted to feel close to them, and its our only hint / insight in the entire movie of what his true intentions were.
So anyway, as he destroys the city, their first thought is “Well lets see, giant monster attackin the city, what do we do, lets try and kill him by shooting missiles at him” which makes sense. I mean, movie or no movie that’s probably what they’d do in real life. But none of the missiles or helicopters they’ve used against him, work. He blew them all up with ease, and it didn’t stop him from destroying the city. But eventually they were able to be smart, and use the birds to distract him. The interpretation here is that, when you’re facing a big problem or a big issue, sometimes your first instinct isn’t the best option. You have to be smart, and you can’t always take the easy way out.
For example, lets say you have a problem at work, and your boss wants you to clean your dirty office. You can’t be lazy and throw everything on the floor, because he’s going to notice. And he’s also gonna notice if you don’t do anything and put it off. Again, they fired missile after missile, and none of it worked. They fired and even though they hit him, it didn’t do anything. But even when they missed, they did way more damage cause when they missed, they hit other buildings. And that goes back to what I just said, people being lazy and look at what happens, they destroy the city in the process and make it look worse than it did before.
If you really think about it, Godzilla doesn’t really come to destroy the city. He just arrives outta the water and kinda just stands there. It’s only when they begin to shoot at him, does he go crazy and start to lash out. It’s like that scene from The Iron Giant (1999) where the guy tells the troops not to shoot at the robot or the whole thing will start all over with him attacking. It’s basically the same thing here. I don’t think Godzilla wants to hurt anybody, to be honest. I think when he first shows up, he doesn’t even know where he’s at, and alot of that is just confusion.
“Where am I at… Why are people shooting at me…” stuff like that.
At the end of the movie even Raymond Burr (character in the movie and the original 1954 version) said the same thing. At the end of the movie, after they kill Godzilla in the volcano, he goes (and I’m paraphrasing) “You know… I think Godzilla was here to show us something” and he’s right! He was here to show us, that our first instinct isn’t always the best option. If they had not shot at him and started with using the birds, they would’ve never ended up with a destroyed city. The destroyed city thing is also a metaphor in itself, and I’ll probably bring it up over and over down below.
You see this movies like Insurgent, Dawn of the Apes etc but the metaphor here is that, if we don’t smarten up, our environment will be destroyed, maybe not the houses and buildings themselves, but we as a people. The buildings represent us, and I think its much easier to understand visually where we’re at when we see a destroyed city. Destroyed city = destroyed lives.
Now we’re onto the (as of 2015) last Godzilla movie to come out since 2004’s Final Wars, the american 2014 Gareth Edwards version. I just wanna make clear that even though it was a cool movie, my longest review ever, and it was shot well and everything, its probably my least favorite Godzilla movie. It was miles ahead of the 1998 version but still pretty mediocre as a Godzilla film cause it didn’t look like him, and it didn’t sound like him.
But regardless of how un-Godzilla-like the movie was, it still had more and bigger metaphors than both the previous movies I’ve mentioned combined! Now if you read the review I did of the 2014 version then most of this stuff you already know, but I’m gonna go through it again just for this blog. One thing I will say though, was this movie was pretty hectic to review. I remember watching it for the review and writing stuff down as I normally would. But when I sat down to write it, I was very nerve-wracked and I was typing faster than ever, just flying over the pages.
The last time I did a review like this was for Orphan (2009) cause I remember catching that movie on cable and being very taken back by it. I was in a very jumpy mood, even as I was doing the review, so it also made the review very jumpy too. But anyway, as I was writing the review for Godzilla I was making everything I wrote like 10x longer, and I do that alot. The stuff that I write are simple things like short sentences, and then I expand on them in the review and make it sound cohesive and stuff. But with Godzilla, every 1 sentence grew into like 3 paragraphs, which is why (as of this writing) its my longest review ever at 12 pages.
I guess the first thing we can talk about were Godzilla’s enemy’s The MUTO’s which I think is a silly name but whatever. Before the big fight towards the end, most of the time when we see them, their collecting these little missile-like things, carrying them in their mouth. I can’t remember what they do with them, or even why they need them, but I think these scenes represent something. There’s a similar scene in Godzilla 1984 where he attacks the power plant and we see him holding the radiator thing in his hand. I’m just not 100% sure the meaning behind this one, atleast not yet.
Another scene is when we see the soldiers shooting at the MUTO’s. This kinda reminds me of the previous 2 movies (especially 84) but it takes it a step further. We as the audience know that these missiles and rockets don’t affect Godzilla or even his enemies, but by not being smart, these guys shoot at the monsters, making them even angrier and making them destroy the city even more. But 2014 takes it a step further cause the second they shoot at the MUTO’s the power gets cut off. I mentioned this in my review but to me, that obviously says something:
The MUTO’s are supposed to represent us. They (just like some of the people on this planet) are destroying the planet by not taking care of it, committing crimes, etc. The second they shoot at the monsters, all the power goes out. I mentioned this above, but to me, by shooting at the creatures, its kinda like their trying to take the easy way out and eliminate them quick. And like I said above, even in life, taking the easy way out isn’t always the best choice, and in this case, it won’t be a choice at all. They try and easily destroy these creatures, and even if the bullets they used were strong enough, its not gonna work here.
I’m not a religious person, nor and I trying to make this sound like I’m trying to convert you. But when they shoot at the MUTO’s I always imagine god looking down on them, and going “nope, you’re not seeing what I’m trying to show you, and for that u must suffer” It’s no different than if your playing monopoly with someone, and they decide to punish you by taking your chips and removing them from the board. That’s basically what’s going on here, God saw they were trying to cheat, not understanding the lesson, and had to stop it, even if he knew the bullets weren’t gonna do anything.
-godzilla arrives, but we don’t know what he’s looking for. It’s alot like us, in that we fight and we destroy the planet but sometimes we don’t know why / fightin over nothin
-The truth is there, and its hard to face, so people run. Same with Jurassic Park, Planet of apes, etc. You misuse, they abuse.
-I saw this one lockup episode, with this dude named James Stone. He was talkin about cats, and he goes “I don’t like people but I like cats, cause their not the ones messin up the world, we are” which is the exact same thing I said about Godzilla. And its amazing the fact that he still knows this, having been locked up as many years as he has.
-here’s a quote from the new Shin Godzilla movie director:
“In movie after movie,” he said, “People merely ran away from the stampeding monster, and no one tried to face up to the issue of accountability” which is sorta how we act when we’re scared / running from our problems. It’s a natural reaction, but it doesn’t really fix anything, especially if we as humans are the ones that created the monster in the first place.
-director of silent hill says monsters are not really monsters but a mockery of human beings, the real monsters are the people, sounds like Godzilla
-you cannot control mother nature
-godzilla is mother nature, not meant to be defeated, unlike most other monster movies
-king kong destroys train / so did Godzilla, must be a metaphor, maybe a hate towards transportation.
Godzilla (ending)
Grand Theft Auto
-In GTA V Trevor and Michael are committing felonies and killing people just like every GTA protagonist does, but in the cutscenes they talk as though they have the whole world figured out, about money and corruption and the government. I don’t watch the cutscenes but you can still hear em in the car talking as you drive to the next mission.
Gremlins
-In Gremlins, I was watching the movie and started writing down all these points that I thought were interesting. Maybe I was digging too deep, but here’s a few that interested me:
-they need light to kill em
-ppl livin in the dark
-after midnight they sleep, etc
For some reason when I read this stuff, I can’t help but think there is a metaphor there.
Jurassic Park / World
-In Jurassic World the one kid is seen hitting on girls while his little brother is talkin about the dinosaurs.
-In another scene, dork who works the rides doesn’t know how to deal with people, saying “C’mon guys I just work here” Its kind of a contrast to the first movie, where the fat guy thinks he has everything figured out.
-in one scene you see the 2 brothers in a giant bubble as they explore the park. Visually it looks cool but it could also be another metaphor scene.
-Them not being able to control the park.
-chinese dude says Jurassic world was built to show us how small we are / Hoskins says war is part of nature
-Jurassic world, chick says its okay to lie when people are scared, reminds me of the president
-jurassic world has asian, black, white, Indian
-jurassic world has big room with monitors, just like other movies
-in Jurassic World, girl at the computer says “follow the radiation” reminds me of Godzilla
-Jurassic, like Rise, trying to control things that aren’t meant to be controlled with destroy the city, you can’t control mother nature, happens in deep blue sea and Godzilla too
Man of Steel
-in one scene the guy goes to Lois “can you imagine how people on this planet would react if they knew there was something like this was out there” and this goes along with what I said about people being different.
-The movie is really about being strong, and having the power to do whatever you want but also knowing when to use it. I’ll probably mention this again, but it reminds me of both Godzilla and Pacific Rim. Before I saw Pacific Rim for the first time, I thought it was just another giant robot movie. But the more and more I saw it, the more and more I became interested in the non-robot scenes, the ones with the humans.
The story in the movie is so complex and has its own set of metaphors too. Pacific Rim is about having the power, and knowing how to control it. Godzilla is about having the power, but not knowing how to use it.
-Regarding Krypton, Lois asks Superman “won’t you be weaker around it” and he says “yes, but that won’t stop me from trying” which is basically the same thing I said about scenes from Divergent: even though your weak, keep going, cause that’s what life is all about.
-In one scene, Superman gets up and tells the police “your afraid of me cause you can’t control me” and I think the metaphors here are pretty obvious. By control he also means “control to do” or “control to beat” and it also goes back to what I said about Godzilla. The giant monster arrives, and their first thought is to destroy it, but it doesn’t work. You can’t get in the way of mother nature.
Oddworld (beginning)
-use a quote from my boy Lorne Lanning, creator of Oddworld
“The greatest stories out there, are the ones we can relate to”
-I saw this interview online with Lorne Lanning, and he was wearing a grey shirt. But at one point he says there’s a message in Star Wars, and I kinda knew that. As of this writing I have yet to see any Star Wars movies, but I will eventually. But I always knew there was some type of metaphor in those movies, which is why their so popular, same reason why Godzilla is so popular. On the surface you could see them as giant monster movies or giant action / space movies, but as you dig deeper you’ll begin to realise why these movies are so special and relatable.
-security / computer rooms: This is one thing I noticed in Godzilla (specifically 1984) Divergent, Jurassic World and Maze Runner (not harry potter or hunger games) but all 4 of those movies have big scenes with computer monitors. To me, the monitors are special cause they reveal to the characters that they are being watched somehow.
-Lorne says the subtext in Star Wars was globalization, which is the process of interaction and integration among the people. I’m not gonna act like I know exactly what he means by this (since I haven’t seen the movies yet) but I know Star Wars has a huge metaphor, just like Godzilla.
-the glukkon represents not just the president, but your teacher or your boss. a big guy in a suit who’s really a little guy
-The Oddworld games have alotta society in them. Of course, I didn’t realise any of this when I was a kid, but as I got older I began to see it. The character of Abe represents alot of us, the ones that are at the bottom of the food chain. You got the sligs, who only feel tough when they have a gun in their hand. You also have the glukkons, who are big guys in suits but underneath of that, their just small creatures who couldn’t harm the average person. To me they represent our biggest leaders, and how even though they have alotta power, their still just as fragile and mortal and we are.
-oddworld, slaves, being manipulated by a boss who’s really just a head with arms
-in one Lorne Lanning interview I saw, he says “people play games to escape the real world” which is true. He also says “The best movies / novels are the ones which reflect us” which is also true, especially for movies like Harry Potter, Divergent, Godzilla, etc stuff about society. He also said something about Computers having 128 GB’s of memory back in the 90’s and I thought that was cool.
This is sorta off-topic but whatever. As of this writing (2016) consoles have 8GB’s of memory but the computers in the 90’s had (according to him) 128 GB’s of memory. But there’s so many factors at play here, probably more than I can name, but here’s the main one: computers in the 90’s had a 1500% increase, yet unless you were working on Jurassic Park or Toy Story, there wasn’t really any photorealism back then. So it’s that weird thing of, they have all this power, but alotta people didn’t know how to use it.
Think of it like this: it’d be like giving a 15 year old kid who has no experience, 128 GB’s of memory and giving a guy who has years of experience, 8 GB’s. The guy with no experience is gonna do far worse, cause he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Fact of the matter, is knowing how to use the memory is worth alot more than just how much you have. That’s why The Last of Us gets so much praise, cause they were able to pull of such a visually stunning game on such little hardware. FYI I’m not really a fan of TLOU at all, I was just using it as an example.
Again, having the power doesn’t mean anything unless you know how to use it, and I’ve brought this up a few times. All developers have access to the 8 GB’s or RAM, but not every developer is creating a stunning, graphically intense game. These systems have 100’s of games and 100’s of developers, but there’s only a small few that stand out graphically, like The Order 1886 and Infamous and Killzone (to name a few) so the other 80% of devs that also have access to the 8 GB’s just aren’t skilled enough to do that stuff.
So anyway that was the point I was trying to make, even though it was off-topic and had nothing to do with this whole society thing. Sorry for the rambling, but I had to get that off my chest.
Oddworld (end)
Pacific Rim
-black dude in pacific rim says radiation makes him bleed, and that’s why he enjoys flying solo. I know there’s a metaphor regarding radiation when it comes to Godzilla, I just can’t put my finger on it yet.
-The movie is ultimately about knowing who to trust, staying calm, and controlling your memories or the monster inside you will take over.
-in one scene, guy says “gods are expressing their displeasure with the world” mentioning god, how he represents us. I feel Godzilla is also about God as well, and I even mentioned God in the scene where he turns all the electricity off in the Gareth Edwards movie.
-godzilla is about showing us what to do, pacific rim is about knowing when your ready and trusting people who aren’t related to you
Superheroes
-Spiderman, having your parents killed, wearing a mask, etc.
-One thing I never realized, is that most heroes relate to things that are usually ignored / looked over:
-spiders / spiderman
-cats / Catwoman
-penguins / far away animals
-bats / scary
The Maze Runner
-in Maze Runner they call Thomas Greeny and in Divergent they call her stiff. By definition, the word “green” means “supporting” or “protection” though I’m not sure how this describes him since he’s kinda nerdy.
-In Maze Runner, the giant doors represent life, and the kids represent the kids in life who need to man-up and take control. The younger fat kid represents the smaller kids in life and shows them that they can do it too, no matter how small and out of shape they are.
-They say the grievers take you if you don’t know who you are. Just like in life you’ll get taken advantage of if you don’t know who you are.
-In the beginning, Thomas fights and bumps his head and remembers his name. It’s alot like life, in that the moment you fight back, you realise who you are and how strong you are.
-Asian dude says the maze opens up a different section everyday. Its alot like life, everyday is something new, so be prepared.
-the movie covers all races and age groups, black, white, asian and even Indian, kids and women.
-girl says last thing she remembers was water / feeling like she was drowning. My guess is they were reborn in some way.
-To me, the phrase “wicked is good” = “being different is good”
Maze Runner
- dork says “maybe you should’ve asked before you killed em all” this is like Godzilla, people killing for no reason at all
The Neverending Story
-neverending story, just like Godzilla, The Nothing, people dying over nothing
-its called the neverending story cause you can change it at any moment and your life has infinite possibilities
The Wizard of Oz
wizard of oz, having a brain, having a heart, courage, all qualities we should have, kinda like divergent and tomorrowland. if you don’t have those qualities, your world might crash, just like it did on the witch
Other
Below is a bunch of stuff I wrote down regarding “society” and how all these movies deal with one another. Most of em were just notes, so I’m gonna leave em like that cause if I start taking them out and trying to combine them, its gonna make this whole thing just too damn long and confusing so I’m gonna leave them as notes. We also cover a wider variety of movies down below:
Superheroes
-In Hulk, Man of Steel and Divergent, people don’t understand them, and they wanna use their powers not for good but for their own reasons. It also reminds me of the scene from Rise of the Apes where the girl goes “You’re trying to control things that aren’t meant to be controlled”
The same thing happens in a few of my other favorite movies, like Jurassic Park, Hollow Man and Deep Blue Sea. They try and use technology to control things but it always ends up bad.
Other
-The Matrix is about people who are blind to the world around them.
-Terminator 2 talks about massive cover-up in one scene
-zombies / society: I’m not the biggest zombie fan and I hate walking dead and dawn of the dead, but I think zombies have a metaphor behind them: people who kill for no reason / don’t have a mind of their own.
-Independence Day 2 has gay couple - society / the way we treat each other
-I read this one interview on Independence Day 2 and the production designer says “all the worlds nations are united against a common enemy” and I think that quote deals with alot of the stuff I’m talkin about here.
-I’m gonna edit this thing 100’s of time into the future, cause I’m always seeing new movies and always writing down new things and making new connections.
I’m gonna expand upon alot of this in the future, right now I’m just setting the state so to speak.
green: don’t confuse this with green with envy
they call him greenie in maze runner
anxiousness
in the process they land on buildings
-After Tris first matrix text, he asks her how long she was in there. He says she was in there 20 mins, 3 times faster than the average. 3 x 4 = 12 lol (get back to this)
-Society - GTA, Fight Club, Divergent, Maze Runner, Pacific Rim, Harry Potter, etc
-rocky, after he brings her home, adrian represents rocky: afraid to come in, nervous, removes glasses, take a chance and you’ll know. use pictures of her in house, rocky in chair
-rocky boxing in the meat packing area, then later paulie tries to kick him out and he goes “It’s cold outside Paulie”
-beetlejuice and batman returns:
presentation scenes
beetle juice guests
batman and max
when city goes nuts, the mayor runs
same with oddworld, big guy in suit who’s rly a chicken
mayor firing the wrong person / boss being bad
same with beetlejuice, big guy stealing the book
tim burton
makeup kits
edward
catwoman
-evil kid films, joshua, good son, orphan, etc
Other
-all society films have headmaster: harry potter, maze Runner, the giver, divergent, etc
-maze runner zombies destroyed city, alot like Godzilla, people lose themselves
-divergent, edge and maze all have walls
-cat in the hat, breaking rules
-series of unfortunate events, being bossed around
-Cinderella, being bossed around
-in charlotte’s web, pig says “you’re a spider how are you gonna stop em” which is referring to that small people can’t do anything
-Dawn of Apes, maze runner, Godzilla, insurgent, etc have destroyed cities
-suicide squad, metaphor for inmates
-top votes for sci fi movies, inception, the matrix, similarities are entering different worlds
-alien resurrection, trying to control aliens but they break loose, sorta like Jurassic park, Rise, etc
-men in black, having to lie so people don’t riot
-cube movie, government, etc trying to control people
-cube 2 alternate ending says Kate was only in the cube for 6 minutes, reminds me of the scene from divergent.
-jumper is about running from your problems, even though some can run faster / catch you
-day the earth stood still, guy says he wants to change human behavior, even though he hurts people in the process. Kinda reminds me of Godzilla, even though he kills people. It’s only in death where people actually change.
-time machine, going to the past destroys your future, obsessing over it, forget the past and move on
-big stadium / ceremony: another similarity I noticed with alotta these movies like Divergent, Maze Runner, The Giver and Harry Potter is that there’s always this big stadium speech and there’s always this old headmaster / type person.
-both Divergent and Harry Potter are broken up into groups, each representing different personality traits: Harry Potter has Slitherin, Griffindor, etc and Divergent has Dauntless, Amity, etc.
-giant walls: Both Maze Runner and The Giver have scenes that talk about giant walls, and I thought that was cool. The metaphor here is the walls represent not only emotional walls, but also objects that are in peoples way, holding them back from going after what they really want in life.
-Tomorrowland is about lazy people who aren’t inspired to do anything with their lives. The character Frank is the perfect example. He’s been in his little bunker for 30 years or however many years it was, not doing anything, not asking about what’s going on around him. Visually and storywise it also reminds me alot of The Wizard of Oz. Not only that, but Frank represents guys in their 40’s Casey represents regular age people and Athena represents people in their pre-teens, sorta like Maze Runner with the little fat kid: All age groups and all different races.
-tomorrowland in texas, wizard in kansas
-in Maze Runner, Divergent and Harry Potter they all drink a liquid they don’t know the contents of. I think the basic metaphor here, is don’t do something or put something in your body that your unsure of.
-I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I read about Star Wars The Force Awakens on imdb one day and the directors mentioned how 3 of the heroes weren’t white. And the director said something about the next film having gay characters. It was obvious why he was doing this too. Not only do these movies make alotta money and reach such a huge demographic, but the story of these films is so complex and relatable to everybody.
Other
-all these movies have their own language, and I mention this alot in the walkthroughs. Their saying “this” but what they really mean is “this”
-In my review of Godzilla I wrote all that at once, but with Divergent I figured out more stuff as time went on / one by one. I think its because I grew up with the movies as a kid and already had a head start.
-In Cinderella, James and Giant Peach, Harry Potter, their all orphans who have bad siblings and step-parents, and I think everybody can relate to being bullied at some point in their lives.
-In the Equals trailer, they have a big presentation scene like Divergent and Harry Potter and The Giver. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but the plot sounds pretty cool, a world where emotions do not exist.
IMPORTANT NOTICE!
This blog, along with the directors and writers blog, in my opinion are kinda sloppy. I try not to type this stuff in note form unless I absolutely have to, but it was the only way for me to type this stuff out and not feel like I had to group everything into coherent paragraphs, which takes forever. I’ve already held onto both these blogs for like 3 years cause I just kept expanding and expanding and wanted it to look perfect, till I realized they probably never will be perfect.
I’m always constantly coming up with new notes and new ways to group things, so I’m improving literally on a daily basis. I love coming up with new things to talk about but also in doing that, your almost always adding something or tweaking something, so it’ll never be 100% perfect. As I type this I still got over 186 different notes on my ipod, along with 100 more on my laptop, so I’m always comin up with stuff.
At this point I gotta let some of that perfectionism go, cause if I don’t I know it’ll never get posted lol. Nothing on this site (including the reviews) will ever be perfect to me, but I do strive to be the best I can be as a writer. I do think in being the best I can be, I push myself to constantly come up with improvements and tweaks but in doing that, I also gotta sacrifice that cause I’m constantly tweaking the stuff I write. So I’m gonna let that go and just post it. I learned this from the update section, cause those aren’t perfect either.